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Topic: Wrong Photography Ethics? (Read 74631 times)

My take is that it is OK to remove a few stuff when they were not supposed to be there, but not so much OK to add ... For example i hated that when Stockholm was full of contruction cranes all over the place and i couldn't take a pict without them ...

I doubt anyone would disapprove of what you have done. Not even RPL. Or at least not disapprove the way my photo has been disapproved by some.

As long as the photographer is not entering a competition and not breaking its rules, to me it doesn't matter what the photographer does with the image, it is his image, his vision ...as far as I'm concerned he can remove/add whatever he wants. Those who are capable of making awesome changes/modifications will continue to do so while those who are incapable will continue to crib that it is unethical.

+10^99999

If I were to buy a print to hang on my wall, I would have chosen #2. Whoop-de-do, he played with the sky, but the essence of the shot remains the same.... three big wild cats. If you want to carry the logic through, people should not sharpen images, or color balance, or crop.... Even the act of pointing the camera or zooming in/out is to modify what is being represented.

Put things in perspective, it's not like Godzilla is walking along the skyline...It's a nice image. I like it.

Am very confused. I have made changes but not altered nature. Have I done something wrong?

Thx

No, you have not. It looks better. It's not as if you added an extra cheetah. I don't even particularly think you need to disclose it. It looks natural.

There is a common theme on photo forums, with certain people suggesting that a photo should be what the photographer saw. Maybe if one takes that statement metaphysically (as in: saw in his mind's eye type of thing), I agree. Literally? I do not, and I find it funny when those same people then post desaturated images of their dinner at f/1.2 with the camera held at MFD. This isn't that theme, but it's kinda like it.

To me, the end product has always been about what I want it to be. I'm not a photojournalist; there are rules in that realm for good reason. When it comes to art, do what you want to do. Your image is art.

Most of us are not forensic photographers who shoot crime scenes and dead bodies ... photography for me is a passionate hobby and an art form ... I'm no good at drawing or painting or sculpting ... the closest I can hope to get to any decent art form is making images and manipulating them the way I like ... I am happy to manipulate and change images so they are pleasing and/or compelling to look at ... even if it mans adding a lighting bolt or removing an ugly wire or add an extra cheetah or make a fat person look a little slimmer (in fact I routinely use liquify tool to make people, with a big paunch, look a little slimmer) and as a photographer it gives me great joy to see people feel good about themselves when they look at the images I've manipulated ... I don't give a damn if the so called "purists" think it is unethical ... I thank God everyday that photography is my hobby and that it gives me a chance to look for beauty in the world around me and if I can't see it, I'll just manipulate that scene in photoshop, and I don't need to worry about being unethical coz I am not a forensic photographer shooting crime scenes and dead bodies.

That makes two of us! But in my case I must not enhance nature pictures to much that it is a total lie. In other words if I photograph a running cheetah, I cannot put a lion behind it to create a false story. Regards and thanks.

Thank you everyone for taking time to comment. I learnt a lot.Appreciate.

Hi Sanj, as always you bring something interesting to this forum. It made for an interesting discussion without too much polarization.

Pretty much all my photos goes into LR4 where I will work more or less with them depending on what I will use them for. I do some work for my children's school, for website, promotion material etc, then I shoot medium JPEG and only adjust some WB and little bit of exposure sometimes. I am now preparing for my first exhibition and of course for those I spend alot more time on each photo.

I am originally from Sweden. I think it was last year or so, a wildlife photographer won the wildlife photograph of the year or something, the subject was a lynx. There are plenty of them in Sweden, but you rarely see them. People started to question the picture and finally the guy came out and admitted that he had taken the picture of a lynx at a zoo and then pasted it into a regular winter landscape. I guess his career as a wildlife photographer came to an abrupt end.

Having said that, I think we are allowed to do whatever we want with our pictures as long as it's clear what we've done, depending on the purpose of the picture, art, documenting a scene, publishing etc.

Sometimes though, I just accept that the sky was white that day.

thanksJ

I understand what you saying. I looked at the photo a long time and the bland sky kept irritating me so I added the cloud. But the moment I did that I got bit unsure of myself and posted here to get advice from experts.

I understand what you saying. I looked at the photo a long time and the bland sky kept irritating me so I added the cloud. But the moment I did that I got bit unsure of myself and posted here to get advice from experts.

If by "experts" you mean expert photographers, forget everything I said. If you mean expert at having opinions, then mine are still valid.

FWIW, my local camera shop has a fairly regular contest (not sure if monthly or quarterly) and for the current one they are encouraging Photoshop manipulation.

Logged

Hobby Shooter

I understand what you saying. I looked at the photo a long time and the bland sky kept irritating me so I added the cloud. But the moment I did that I got bit unsure of myself and posted here to get advice from experts.

If by "experts" you mean expert photographers, forget everything I said. If you mean expert at having opinions, then mine are still valid.

+1 on that regarding myself also.

As said, it comes down to what you will use the picture for. To hang on your wall or sell prints, then no problems at all. Even for publishing I would say, depending on which context.

Again Sanj, thanks for starting this thread it's important to have a philosophical discussion about what we do also.

To the Original Poster, I personally wouldn't try to make something out of nothing. Much of photography is about the quality of the light and background and not the target subject. It's the difference between a record shot and something of stature. Personally, I limit my post production to what ever I can efficiently do in Lightroom. But there always are exceptions, If I had a paying client who needed a specific shot to be taken on a day with poor quality of light and they had a lot of need and expectation....then yes I would pull a rabit out of the hat for them. If it was a photograph for stock or personal use....no, I would return on on a day where there was better light and a more interesting composition. I like to get as much as I can in camera.

There are other more "arty" types who say..."hey! Anything goes" and that's fine too...it's just not the path I choose to walk.

I would post a nice piccy here...but Flickr has made a mess with my account and I can't seem to view anything!

He says: "Personally, I have NO problem with any image that has been dramatically altered, as long as it is 'believable' OR so obviously altered that it's not even a question e.g. fantasy, dream-like photographs. I don't mind the 'lie' that is created from a dramatically altered image, since I have felt for years that every photograph is a 'lie' anyway, but my problem with the dramatically altered 'lie' is that it can lead one to believe that a given landscape or cityscape really does "look like that" when, as it turns out, there is no such place on earth."

Thanks for the share! In my photo, such clouds do exist in that part of the world.

Thanks for the share! In my photo, such clouds do exist in that part of the world.

What about the bushes you removed, are there bush-less areas up to the horizon so you could theoretically have gotten this shot around the corner at another time w/o editing? Aren't these cats often around bushes to get cover before attacking their prey?

These things decide if it's more of a "photo" to me than cleaning up distracting objects just for the sake of "a "clean" and perfect shot. I'm often unsure if I should "clean" up my own pictures in the background, it's really a hard decision if this alters it just a bit to avoid distraction or if it's already my personal "this doesn't feel right anymore" category.

The aspect of altering photos that gets to me is when a photo is faked to be misleading. It can be done with or without photoshop.... like a news story about a car accident where children are hurt and someone throws a big stuffed animal into the scene to try to make it a tear-jerker.

If the altered picture is so silly as to be unbelievable, I can accept that it is in good fun, but not the sneaky ones that attempt to deceive.

For example, big storm and flooding hits New York... Photos start to appear like the shark swimming in the subway and on flooded streets.... those are attempts to deceive. The one of the Statue of Liberty hiding behind the pedestal as a huge wave crashes against it or the ones of Godzilla are obvious fakes with no intention to deceive.

If I took a moonlanding picture, added something to the image like a wire, and started to claim that it was proof that the moon landing was faked in a studio, that would be an attempt to deceive..... while Lucky the cat in the picture is obviously not.